Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 18:02:04 +0200
Subject: Re: Mood and Background


Cologne, 15 July 1998

Mike Staples schrieb in Antwort auf:
ME:
> "For example, as Dasein shifts its focus of attention in shifting its
> involvement with beings _as such_, other beings come into view (the view
> of explicit understanding), whereas other beings fade from view, recede
> into the background. This background has not simply disappeared,
> however, but makes itself ‘felt’ (Angang) in mood, in one way or the
> other, in one mode or the other."
>
> In looking for alternative ways of thinking about "the unconscious",
> this seemed important. How is it that the background which is "there"
> but not "there" makes itself known through mood? Is this a special
> feature of mood -- that it has access to the background of understanding
> (is this a background of understanding?)?

Michael, Heidegger says in SuZ (and this makes sense to me) that mood and 
understanding (Befindlichkeit und Verstehen) are equiprimordial modes of 
Erschlossenheit, i.e. of the opening-up of being. But whereas beings come to 
stand in an articulable definition against the horizon of time for 
understanding, mood is a global opening of being as a whole. Dasein is ex-posed 
to being in its respective moods; it is perforce in attunement with being in one 
way or another. Such attunement can be brought to resonance, say, in a way of 
speaking, a way of moving or in song, but it cannot be grasped and brought to 
stand entirely by understanding. The quivering of being itself holds onto itself 
(epochally) in withdrawal. 

This “background” to understanding, as you put it, is different in kind and 
essence to understanding, but there are crossover points. Understanding can, 
indeed, articulate a mood by de-fining it into language, and language always has 
an aura that says more than it says, an excess that comes from the unfathomable 
chasm of being’s openness. Dasein seems to exist as this hovering over a chasm, 
which nevertheless does not necessarily prevent it from grasping its own 
existence against the horizon of time, i.e. bringing its existence to stand _as 
if_ it stood on solid ground. 

Michael
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